GLOSSARY · BUSINESS SETUP
MSO, the business half of the clinic.
An MSO (management services organization) is a company that runs the business side of a medical practice, including the brand, software, marketing, billing, and staff, under a contract with the physician-owned practice.
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What it means
The MSO is the half of a telehealth company that founders and investors own. It holds the brand, the technology, the customer relationships, and the working capital. It provides services to the friendly PC under a management services agreement and charges a fee for them.
The MSO may not make clinical decisions. It can run the storefront, the ad budget, and customer support; it cannot tell providers what to prescribe or how to treat a patient.
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Why it matters to a brand operator
The MSO is where a brand's equity lives, so its agreement with the PC decides what the company is worth. Three terms deserve counsel's attention: how the management fee is set (a flat, fair-market-value fee is standard, while a percentage of revenue can count as fee-splitting in some states), who owns the patient data under the contract, and how the agreement ends.
Regulators read the substance of the arrangement as well as the paperwork. An MSO whose staff direct prescribing patterns undermines the structure no matter how clean the documents are.
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How Tessic Health handles it
Tessic Health drafts and maintains the MSO and friendly-PC structure for each client, with the client as the owner. Tessic operates the clinic under that structure for a flat monthly platform fee plus $25 per completed consult, and never takes a percentage of revenue.
See the published termsRELATED TERMS
Words that come up next.
Friendly PC
A friendly PC is a physician-owned professional corporation that holds the medical side of a telehealth company and works with the business side under contract.
Corporate practice of medicine
The corporate practice of medicine is a legal doctrine that bars companies not owned by licensed physicians from practicing medicine or employing doctors to do it.
Revenue share
A revenue share is a pricing term that gives a partner a fixed percentage of a brand's sales, so the partner's fee grows every time the brand's revenue does.